TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

There’s a time after a relationship ends, when you probably catch yourself thinking, “What happened?” You might find yourself retracing your steps, trying to figure out where you got lost along the way. You might ask yourself, “Was the time I spent with that person REAL? Was any of that real, or at least some of it?”

There's a distinct disenchantment when the spell of the relationship has broken, and the magic’s gone. You’re not seeing the world through love’s rosy lens anymore. You wonder about what you might have overlooked, or misinterpreted, or just got wrong.

I mean, I’ve been there. Most of us have been there more than once. It can take a lot of time and a lot of work, and maybe some therapy, to get to a place of acceptance, let alone contentment, after an important relationship ends. It can take even longer to get to a place of gratitude: to be able to parse how or why it ended from what it WAS. To be able to separate the END of the story from the story as a whole. To be grateful for what the relationship gave you and taught you.

It makes me think of the opening line of the Jack Gilbert poem “Failing and Flying”: “Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.” Even when a relationship ends before we’re ready, even when it hurts, I think there’s something to celebrate in it. Maybe lots of things to celebrate. One of those things we can celebrate is the flying that occurred before we fell.

Today’s poem captures that blend of feelings after a relationship ends. The balance of sadness, wry humor, and gratitude—despite it all—is incredibly moving. Maybe it will inspire you to think about what you’re thankful for in a past relationship—something you learned about yourself, or an experience you had that was particularly joyful and transformative. Maybe, even though it ended, there are beautiful things—REAL things—to hold onto from that time. Panama by Sarah Green

Panama
by Sarah Green

Thanks for carrying the air conditioner and thanks 
for taking off my dress.

Thanks for the afternoon light on your chest
when you said I don’t think what we want is that different.

The week before you proposed, you said I’m a man with a plan
and all I could think of was Panama.

Thanks for getting me pregnant so many times
in dreams. Thanks for considering

waiting in line at the Met 
for Michelangelo’s drawings. It was raining that day.

Somebody said — maybe you, maybe the New York Times,
that the crowd was so big and the pictures so small, it was

hard to get a good look. So we left without trying. 
We went to the farmer’s market, and you bought a blue knit hat.

Do you remember? There was a time when we were certain
of our love. We stood looking over Canadaway Creek

and it wasn’t a shadow — that steelhead twisting in the water,
trying but failing to disguise itself against the shale.

“Panama” by Sarah Green from THE DELETIONS © 2025 Sarah Green. Used by permission of the University of Akron Press.